FRANCIS THICKE

Corporate Colonialism

Frances Moore Lappe (Hope's Edge, 2002) makes the case that often
politicians and corporations use terms that leave us suffering from
"hypocognition." Hypocognition results when a term is used to conjure
up all-positive images to prevent us from understanding what is
really going on. For example, hypocognition makes it hard for the
public to believe there can be anything wrong with "globalism" or
"free trade," which sound like the apple pie and motherhood of the
21st century. It is easy for the press to portray those who protest
against "free trade" as fringe lunatics.

Ms. Lappe coined the term "primitive marketism" as a more
appropriate name for what has become the accepted standard of world
trade over the last 20 years -- that the single principle of
highest return to existing wealth is the sole driver of the
world-wide system of production and exchange. That leaves cultural
integrity, human rights, environmental protection, and even the
ability of people to feed themselves as inconsequential to
multinational corporations reaching around the world for
opportunities for the highest return to existing wealth.

As much as the term "primitive marketism" helps identify problems
inherent to the way global trade is structured today, it takes a bit
of bending of the mind and tongue to use it. It seems to me that a
term that more immediately and clearly identifies where we are headed
with world trade -- a term which leaves no room for hypocognition
-- is "corporate colonialism."

My Webster's dictionary defines colonialism as "The system or
policy by which a nation seeks to extend or retain its authority over
other peoples or territories." Such political colonialism of one
nation over another fell by the wayside in the 20th century. What we
are seeing now is the rise of an economic colonialism of
multinational corporations over nations worldwide.

Corporate colonialism requires no armies, weapons, or even
threats of violence to reap all the benefits of a colonial power.
Whereas 19th-century empire builders sent navies half way around the
world to secure their colonial power, 21st-century corporations
secure their colonial power through financial contributions to
political allies and promises that everyone will get rich if
corporations are allowed to work their "magic" around the world.

We are only starting to wake up to the reality that world "free"
trade means multinational corporations exporting production and
associated jobs to wherever labor can be secured most cheaply and
environmental regulations are least restrictive. We are just
beginning to realize that the great-sounding, theoretical idea that
goods and services are best produced where they can be produced at
the greatest competitive advantage translates into large-scale loss
of employment and community disruption as much as it translates into
greater profits for the corporate bottom line. It is sobering to
realize that the corporate colonialists will exploit "developed"
countries as readily as "undeveloped" countries -- it takes more
money and propaganda in a rich country, but the payoffs are
greater.

Nowhere are the disastrous consequences of corporate colonialism
felt more than in global food trade. Forcing countries to open their
markets to cheap, subsidized, industrially-produced food from abroad
can eliminate markets for local subsistence farmers, driving them off
the land and into the ranks of the hungry. Many American farmers have
also been driven out of business by cheap, imported food produced by
foreign, low-wage laborers. The winners are agribusiness monopolies
that ship, trade, and process food. The losers are farmers who lose
their livelihood, rural communities that lose their population, and
countries that lose food security as they become dependent on
imports.

The further we ship our food, the more vulnerable and
fuel-dependent our food system becomes. Brian Halweil of the
Worldwatch Institute points out that a head of lettuce grown in the
Salinas Valley of California and shipped to Washington, D.C. requires
about 36 times as much fossil-fuel energy in transport as it provides
in food energy when it arrives. Encouraging the shipping of food
around the world under the guise of free trade and corporate profits
only works when fuel is cheap and much of the cost of producing and
shipping food can be externalized from the corporate bottom line. It
makes little sense when laborers are paid a fair wage and the full
environmental costs of production and transport are factored into the
equation.

In centuries past, the best remedy for ending colonial rule was
revolution. My Webster's defines revolution as "A complete and
forcible overthrow and replacement of an established government or
political system by the people governed." Nothing less will be
required to overturn the system of corporate governing we live under
today, though the forces needed will be political and economic rather
than military. The institutions and policies that need to be toppled
include the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), no small task.

The first requirement for fomenting a revolution is for enough
people to recognize the shackles that bind them. The recent uprising
by farmers from around the world at the WTO talks in Cancun may be
the beginning of such a revolution. But, judging from the scant US
corporate media coverage, which generally reported the collapse of
trade talks as a failed opportunity for the world's poor, we in this
country still suffer from acute hypocognition.

Francis Thicke of Fairfield, Iowa, is an organic dairy farmer
and formerly served as the national program leader for soil science
at the USDA Extension Service. Email fthicke@kdsi.net.